Zee Khana Khazana attempts to sustain buzz

Zee Khana Khazana, the 24x7 food channel from ZEEL, started off with a revamp exercise last year and has launched a marketing campaign to sustain the buzz around the channel and its newer properties. The channel has been continuously launching shows almost back to back.

The 360-degree campaign launched by the channel includes an OOH campaign spread across Delhi and Mumbai in the initial phase, to be extended to other cities later. The campaign kick started on February, 24 with a teaser for three days. The message (about fresh content) was then revealed on February 27, and continued for 15 days. The key areas in the city were targeted via hoardings, bus shelter branding and bus side panels on important routes.

The channel has also branded metro stations in Delhi as well as interiors of ladies compartments of the Delhi metro.

Amit Nair, business head, Zee Khana Khazana, explains the objective of the campaign, "The objective is to stand out as a leader in the food and lifestyle genre. With a new and interesting line up this year we aim to reach out to newer audiences. Along with females as our core TG, we will also be targeting the youth as well as the male TG with our new shows."

The channel has increased its marketing budget with high visibility campaigns planned throughout the year. Nair says that the channel is in the process of evolving the content and is looking at newer and more exciting formats around travel and international cuisine, apart from daily cooking shows.

The campaign in the coming year will focus more on new programme launches as the channel boasts of having a very interesting line up planned for this year. Viewer engagement activities will also be incorporated in the shows this year to ensure stickiness.

Bright Advertising has executed the current campaign on outdoor and metro stations. BEST is the partner for bus panel branding.

Scarecrow is the creative agency, while Zee's digital team and Socio Square handle the channel's digital campaigns. The media account is handled by MEC.

Food as a genre on television has been evolving rapidly for the past few years. Nair feels that it is mainly because the people are willing to experiment with the preparation of food and they are open to embrace newer tastes.

"Food has evolved from being three square meals a day to an area to experiment, discuss, share and impress. Innovations in the culinary space, availability of exotic ingredients, growing interest in cooking as a hobby have also added to the growing interest in food shows. Technology also has been a great enabler with apps, websites, mobile complementing the shows on food channels. We at Zee Khana Khazana see great interest from viewers and advertisers in the coming years."

The other channels that telecast content in this genre include Food Food, NDTV Good Times and other infotainment and lifestyle channels. In addition, Hindi GECs too have a lot of content that revolves around food.